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Why America Doesn't Need More Tech Giants Like Apple
Hugh Pickens writes "Optimists says that if only America produced more companies like Apple and Amazon and Google and Facebook, the country's economic problems would be fixed — America could retrain its vast, idle construction-and-manufacturing workforce, and our unemployment and inequality problems would be solved. But Apple's $1 billion new data center in North Carolina has been a disappointing development for many residents, who can't comprehend how expensive facilities stretching across hundreds of acres can create only 50 new jobs, especially after thousands of positions in the region have been lost to cheaper foreign competition. In fact, Apple actually exemplifies some of the reasons why the U.S. has such huge unemployment and inequality problems: 'Digital' businesses like Apple employ far fewer people than traditional manufacturing businesses, Apple's 60,000+ jobs are not just in the U.S. — they're spread around the world. Companies like Apple 'create amazing products and vast shareholder wealth, but they don't spread this wealth around as much as earlier industrial giants did,' writes Henry Blodget. 'So, yes, we should celebrate the success of Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon. But we shouldn't delude ourselves into thinking they're going to solve our unemployment or inequality problems.'"
Apple's $1 billion new data center in North Carolina has been a disappointing development for many residents, who can't comprehend how expensive facilities stretching across hundreds of acres can create only 50 new jobs
There it is. Proof of how wise Americans really are!
How about if people crying about "there are no jobs for me" would either make new products or services people want or improve themselves to be more useful to employers? But nooo, now they're crying how no one is giving money for what they think they want to do.
I learned this very skill in my teen years. You need to be useful to others to be successful yourself. It applies to work, woman and everything. Everyone is selfish and looking for their own good, in a way or another. Either with money, self-improvement, confidence, skills or experiences. Behind every action every human ever does is a selfish though. Leverage that knowledge, be useful and via that, make yourself successful.
'Digital' businesses like Apple employ far fewer people than traditional manufacturing businesses, Apple's 60,000+ jobs are not just in the U.S. — they're spread around the world.
Maybe that comes from the fact that Asians are not as lazy and against "stupid jobs" (when they are in fact the most useful ones) as Americans?
What we need is small, independent, companies competing directly in the same way Linux distros compete with each other. That will encourage innovation.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
You asked !!
Why won't APPLE build 100,000 new data centers ?
#Occupy Apple
Surprised we haven't seen it already.
It is interesting how many people seem to see big businesses and major corporations. They have huge advertising budgets, and thanks to that, you see their logo EVERYWHERE. And they do employ a lot of people, at home and abroad, and support the development of great products (be they actual tangible products like the iPhone or Kindle, or more of a service, like Facebook. That being said, the backbone of any modern economy still lies in small businesses. And the big ones do support the little guys. Look at Apple's App Store, for example. Of the thousands of apps on there, how many of those apps were created and marketed by a small company of less than 100-200 people (or even how many apps were put out by a one-man-shop)? Remember also, that many of these big corporate giants started as small businesses -- Apple and HP both started in a garage in silicon valley.
economic problems would be fixed
How would that stop the metastasis of government into all areas of life AND stop the central bank devaluing every dollar whilst bidding prices up with money made from thin air?
Those 50 jobs aren't the only benefits that came out of the data center.
If it costs $1billion to build that data center, then that's $1billion added to the economy, affecting a lot more people than 50 direct employees.
(How many people did it take to actually construct the place? to handle permits for construction? To deliver food for people that handle permits? To handle mail to deliver food to the people that handle permits for construction, etc..)
Jobs created don't provide the overall picture of an economic effect. Actual spending does.
who can't comprehend how expensive facilities stretching across hundreds of acres can create only 50 new jobs
Yup! Its amazing that the whole project was actually completed with only 50 local people... who now have posh jobs running the place. Actually, it would have taken far less people, but curious onlookers kept getting too close to the packed ACME Instant Data Center (tm), so Apple had to hire 49 more people to make sure the crowd stood back while a single drop of water was added to the ACME package and it expanded instantly into the glorious data center that stands there today.
The Admin and the Engineer
And socialism.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
One way or another those that have wealth are forced to invest. Inflation and taxation will eat a large fortune that is not invested. Often huge business end up owning strip malls that employ a lot of people or they invest in companies that produce hard goods. One issue is that those labor providing investments are not made in the US. Investors seem to have few issues with slave labor or starvation wages in non- advanced nations. America could criminalise the investment in companies that use child labor, starvation wage labor or conscripted labor over seas. Yes, the idea is to put bad people out of business and into jails and lives of poverty. Show the rich that the fast lane to poverty is the bad treatment of people, anywhere.
Seriously? Buy stock. Wealth spreads to owners. It's that simple.
Even the "Traditional Manufacturing Businesses" aren't employing as many people as before. It all comes down to automation. If you do something routine, simple, and repetitive, you can and will be replaced by a machine.
All the talk of how manufacturing will create jobs is just that, talk. In case you haven't noticed modern day manufacturing is automated to a very high degree and requires a lot fewer people to do the job. Robots kill jobs not only in manufacturing, but in pretty much every other employment field. Even scientific research is affected heavily by this and requires fewer people to do the same job. In one week I can do experiments that 5 years ago would have taken 10 people a full year to perform. With such throughput it isn't necessary even to formulate a hypothesis. You just test every possible variation and let the data speak for itself. Machines are more consistent than people, don't get tired, if the make mistakes the mistakes are systematic and easy to troubleshoot. Oh and recently even advanced robots have become very affordable (way cheaper than hiring humans). It is the 19th century industrial revolution all over again but this time it is affecting everybody, except politicians. Although I suspect lying can also be automated. Now this rises the problem what to do when 30-50% of working age adults become unemployed. I can imagine how this will work in the much hated in the US 'welfare states', but the US society itself is in a lot of trouble the way it is set now.
It's a continent. Thank you and good night!
Maybe that comes from the fact that Asians are not as lazy and against "stupid jobs" (when they are in fact the most useful ones) as Americans?
So many citations needed here. Okay so you say "the fact" and I'm asking you where you get your "facts."
You say that Asians have this awesome work ethic and will do all the dirty work? How do you prove that? If you go by GDP per capita, I think the US is doing alright comparatively.
Could you please prove that Americans are against "stupid jobs?" I used to pick rock, bail hay, bus tables, work at a parking booth, etc. Now I code computers. There's my pitiful sample set of "one" please send me your numbers that prove it is applicable to all Americans. I think a lot of Americans working in the middle of nowhere get overlooked by people like you.
When you say "(when they are in fact the most useful ones)" I question how objective the superlative "most useful" is here. The factory worker, the quality control worker, the designer, the investors, etc. They all have a use. Which is "most useful" is totally a matter of opinion. The question I have for you is, do you think that Apple would just stop making iPhones if they were suddenly not allowed to import them from China? I highly doubt it.
I challenge you to grow up and to stop relying on tired stereotypes.
It applies to work, woman and everything. Everyone is selfish and looking for their own good, in a way or another.
So what you're saying is that you've learned that there is no place for love or satisfaction of a job well done? Just money? I'm really really sad you find yourself in that position ... keep manipulating your wife based on her greed. You know what else Americans are good at? Divorce.
My work here is dung.
The markets have decided that iPhones and iPads sell really well, that's all there is to it. Whether there is a "need" for companies similar to Apple - it's up to the markets to decide.
However with every more the governments make sure that there will be no small competition to the large established businesses in any industry. Be it the food and drug industries, be it telcos or utilities (water/gas/sewer/roads/transportation/energy), be it entertainment, be it military, be it MS or Oracle or Apple or Google whatever.
The government implicitly that it wants only the large companies, that's why the interest rates for borrowing are pushed down, so no small business can get those loans and the credit is only available to the ever growing and ever and all consuming government.
The patent and copyright laws, the licensing by all these departments like SEC, FINRA, FDA, FCC, whatever. Everything is done so that there will be no competition.
Try and start your own investment business today, go ahead. Start it from scratch. If you are not already wealthy (like a millionaire), you won't even move past the first hurdles of licensing across all states and you CANNOT ADVERTISE your success, it's illegal in the investment business, it's a direct help to the established businesses.
Don't forget the added costs of things like the Patriot act, where you must be an unpaid spy for the IRS and CIA and FBI, spying on your own clients.
Try and start your own store chain. Try and cut through all the red tape of all the licensing and all the labor regulations. Good luck.
Sure, you can start a software company, your own 'Compu-Global-Hyper-Mega-Net' from your house. Try and sell some of your software though, it's a tossup. You are probably going to be attacked by armies of lawyers based on anything, from patents to copyrights, it doesn't have to be true, but if you become successful enough, they'll "buy you out".
You can't handle the truth.
The problem here is the same thing that is effecting all our decisions. We look at the top 1% (people, companies, whatever) and get angry because they have everything, and then look at the bottom 1% and get angry because they have nothing and think one must cause the other. And we completely overlook the middle.
Its the middle thats important. Because from there you can fall to the bottom too easily. Only from there can you typically rise to the top. The middle is the backbone. As mentioned already, that $1 billion spent on Apple's data center employed thousands of people directly and indirectly for at least a period of time. And those people and companies are probably all from the middle.
You can argue that our economic system is broken (or flawed by design) but so is our society. We pay attention only to the top and bottom and ignore the middle. We have brains and brawn but no backbone. We have the tools but no wisdom to use them correctly.
-- Senior Software Engineer, Attorney appearance services, locallawyerapp.com.
The US needs companies like JR and JP. They employ lots of people who seem to do nothing.
GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
One Jobs was far more than enough. The damage 50 would do is unfathomable.
Data centers have always created very few jobs due to the high level of automation in these facilities. As a result, they don't appear to be a compelling candidate for economic development incentives, which have traditionally been all about job creation. But there's a political component to this. Data centers represent far more than jobs or bricks & mortar. They have become symbols of the new economy, a tangible sign that a community is making a successful transition to the digital economy. Governors and local legislators understand the value of a press conference to announce a new project from Google, Facebook or Apple. That's why North Carolina has hit the data center trifecta with projects for all three of those companies, and continues to offer aggressive incentives for new projects. We've been tracking this trend for years, and there are more states than ever before offering incentives for data centers. That competition will intensify as the Internet continues to transform our economy, and ensure that tax incentives for data center projects are here to stay.
RichM
Data Center Knowledge
Apple's Jobs is dead.
Large companies at first look seem to employ a lot of people. But the amount of people they employ is much smaller than you'd expect.
If a small company needs a sysadmin, accountant and receptionist, then that's 3 people that are employed. If there are 3 such companies, then each needs their own, so that's 9 people employed.
But what if they merge? All those people are probably not working at their limit at the new company. The sysadmin that managed 10 servers probably can manage 30. The new company is not so huge as to have more than one door, so only one receptionist is needed. The accountant can handle a bit more work. And so it's quite likely that 6 people will be laid off.
If the objective is creating jobs then what you want is creating inefficiency: lots of small companies that employ people below their full capacity. Large companies are experts at employing as few people as possible. If there's one thing that would be counterproductive towards that goal, it's them.
Municipalities and state governments are MORONS. There is not one reason to spend a single cent of tax incentives on a data center. They hear "Google", "Apple", "Facebook", and they have visions of hundreds of highly-paid software engineers sitting in row upon row of cubicles, and then going home to their brand-new houses, spending all their millions in local stores, etc.
Not even the companies themselves promise much in the way of jobs, but the governments aren't paying attention.
If you have finite electrical generating and grid capacity, it's far better to lure in SOME kind of manufacturing facility (they do still exist) then a data center that will book a huge portion of the output while employing a tiny handful of people that really don't get paid that much.
Inequality is only a problem if you are a communist.
Increased automation was supposed to bring more leisure time and higher pay --- instead it's been used to prop up corporate profits:
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=1345
I want a politician to stand up and demand a shorter work week --- force companies to either hire more workers or pay more overtime.
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
No way Americans can compete against 3rd world wages. Software development is probably the easiest thing in the world to offshore - you don't even have to ship products. Less than 25% of IBM employees were born in the USA.
"In fact, Apple actually exemplifies some of the reasons why the U.S. has such huge unemployment and inequality problems: 'Digital' businesses like Apple employ far fewer people than traditional manufacturing businesses" That's quite a reach, to say Apple only needs X people, therefore this is a contributing factor to unemployment and inequality.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
I've heard a simple statement that captures much of the problem, "People have to be willing to pay more at Walmart". If they want stuff made in the US, or more correctly the tax base that underlies such things, they have to pay for it. They can do it implicitly or explicitly, via 1930's style economic protectionism. Granted, that stuff didn't turn out too well back then, but if people want their government benefits they're going to have to pony up their share for them. Unless the tax base is maintained, the benefits have to go down.
Bridge Comes to San Francisco With a Made-in-China Label
Im no us citizen, but I wonder if it really is more economical in the long run to outsource everything to china.
Most companies won't hire him because he's too old
Such companies that hire an inexperienced young person but don't hire an equally inexperienced older person may find themselves in violation of the Age Discrimination Act of 1975 or foreign counterparts.
If you want to create jobs buy items made as close to you as possible.
Big companies won't tell you this because it will hit their profit margin
Government won't tell you this because they are lead by big companies and are restricted by trade agreements.
But this is what has to be done. As long as you are buying stuff made in China/Korea/Mexico Companies will continue to ship your jobs overseas. Buy local, sure you'll pay more but the person that got hired now has money to buy the stuff that you are making.
This is not rocket science. Made in means you are providing emplyment for someone who is keeping you employed!
It's arguable that Apple as a business might not directly create as many jobs as a traditional manufacturing business; however, Apple certainly fosters the creation of "collateral" jobs with myriads of developers working night and day to produce iOS apps. As of today, Apple has approved more than 500,000 of them (source).
If there's simply not as much work to go around, perhaps this will actually lead to the decline of the American work week.
How could we set up a system that supports twice as many people working half as long?
Facebook is currently building a datacenter in my home town. Everyone I know mentions it to me "Apply so you can move back" They're surprised when I mention how few people the massive facility will staff.
You underestimate how little money companies are prepared to save by betraying their countries.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
the problem is not unemployment, it's employment. it's good to see machines doing all the work so we have to work less and less so we can focus on the fun things in life - the only problem is that the profit stays in the hand of fews instead of benefitting the people in a whole. :(
we can have better and better lifes and escape wage slavery with the help of the machines, but as always we're doing it wrong and let the thieves take the big piece of the cake.
Nike Premium Shoes. Cost to make £4 materials $6 labour. Sale price (USA) $200.
Now how much more does labour cost in the USA than China? Tenfold increase? That'd be a $260 trainer, then. Or £60 less profit.
from the mundane items like sewage and garbage, maintenance of roads to and from, proving electrical power, educating the children if any of the plant's workers, to providing police and fire protection.
It might be only fifty people in the facility but the support mechanism to allow such a vast process does involve hundreds if not more going forward.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
is that many states have their own absurd regulatory systems. For example, in many states you have to be "certified" to be a "professional hair braider." Even most pro-government liberals are probably spitting up their coffee hearing that you have to get a license that says you're competent to braid hair and can get fined or locked up for not having it, but it's really there. Same with interior decorating. Yes, interior decorating, not design (which has some architectural components).
What is needed is a top-down audit with a prejudicial eye to remove regulations unless their absence would cause a clear and present danger to life, limb, property or the environment if removed. Virtually all professional licensing needs to be tossed, including for the legal profession. Part of the problem we have today with students bankrupting themselves at law school is because many states make it so that you can't sit for the bar unless you have a law degree (autodidacts need not apply!)
It's a little known fact that many of the southern states are actually as regulation happy as the northern states. The main difference is our taxes tend to be lower and we're (AFAIK) right to work across the board. North Carolina is struggling in no small part because they have long had a profligate political system and a peculiar good ol' boy style of being selectively hostile to economic freedom.
If more people designed like Apple we would not have any many un-attractive poorly designed consumer products. ;) Though we need design as well as manufacturing. We also need less government restrictions on medical research. If we don't do it someone else well.
-Xen
Remember that America is a continent. I hate the use of those terms in reference to this country and its citizens. Calling this country “America” and those of us living in it “Americans” smacks of the most vile and despicable arrogance possible and a self-centeredness that is an underlying cause of the hatred that many of the people of the world have against this country.
We all benefit from technological progress and low low prices. Companies need to compete as well as make money. If they couldn't find cheaper labor overseas for certain functions then they would be motivated to automate. Thus the manufacturing jobs would go away regardless. If the companies don't reduce costs, and their competition does, then they won't be able to compete and surprise! the company closes down and all the employees get laid off. Automation has been increasing since henry ford's assembly line and should be considered a fact of life. Keep skills fresh and be ready to learn new ones should be our motto.
Small town, 1 billion dollar data center, and presumably those 50 employees includes all security guards. If the town just took the data center hostage the net profit would be huge, besides the fact that nobody would ever build another data center there again. 1 billion over 3000 residents is like, a profit of 300,000 a person? Shave off a percent or two to bribe the local cops and they've hit pay dirt
Obviously, both extremes didn't work out in terms of spreading the wealth equally.
Jobs created don't provide the overall picture of an economic effect. Actual spending does.
The main benefit of the data center is the very existence of the data center, which is of value to many people (to varying degrees).
Professional "economists" would have a much harder time trying to pull the wool over people's eyes if everyone just learned the meanings of and the differences between four simple concepts: production, consumption, spending and saving.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
As I recall, when automation started getting big in manufacturing, there was an outcry that businesses were killing jobs. This is just an extension of the same old argument. Apple needed to build a data center. It had to go somewhere. They shopped for locations, and the best deal was in NC. Simple economics. I am sure that Apple decision makers took into account that they would have costs to relocate and/or train people for the positions created by this center. Companies like Apple don't exist to create jobs. They exist to create and sell products, and the jobs that are created are those necessary to produce and sell the product. If the local residents can't or won't do the type of work that Apple needs in that area, they need to find appropriate people to fill those positions.
You underestimate how little money companies are prepared to save by betraying their countries.
You underestimate how well placed bribes and rarely enforced regulations save companies money. For instance, I've heard no outcry in China about Foxconn suicides. The government largely waved its hand over it and stated that young workers have mental problems unrelated to their jobs. But the real headlines was that Apple sent Tim Cook to investigate because it was bad PR.
It's not just the wages that are low. The workers themselves are largely expendable. Or do you really believe no child labor went into your electronic devices?
I8-D
You wouldn't happen to be a fan of Larry Winget or read his book Shut up stop whinning and go get a life?
I think people modded you down because they didn't like your answer. I wish it were not true, but after reading the link above book and seeing how in Alabama that no American would bother picking vegetables at $10/hr (not minimum wage!) when unemployment is over 9% shocked me! I assumed people even with college degrees would be linning up if they had student loans to pay or rent.
For the moderators yes, it is true that Asians work for much cheaper, but my neighbor who does I.T. management outsourced to India because they were willing to work 70 hour work weeks and say Yes Sir with a smile when something needed to get done. It angered my other neighbor who used to do I.T. work but businesses are just trying to cut costs to make their shareholders happy and they love the dedication in case a project is failing that the workers are happy to do overtime.
I wish what you said about women being selfish was not true, but I am a product of divorce over money. All I could make was $15/hr after school and her dreams of having a nice house with a pool like what she had with her exhusband caused the divorce. Her new boyfriend is a doctor. Coincidence? Come to think of it she was right and has a right to be happy like everyone else.
If you want to make money you have to get other people to pay you. That comes through not only work, but by serving and giving people/society the most value. You will get paid more
http://saveie6.com/
Tech giants do not exclude manufacturing or other industries.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Note: What I am about to say remains true even for other companies, I just present things specific to Apple....
You only see 50 jobs from Apple for a data center. But what about:
* All of the construction jobs when building out the center.
* All of the revenue from shippers going through nearby towns to and from the data center with supplies and equipment.
* More abstractly, the side benefits of helping Apple grow. If you are helping a large company like Apple gain something, leverage that - you could put together incentives to convince iOS app developers to live in your town, or offer free training to those interested to learn iPhone development. Then you can help ride the tide of a rising Apple.
* Also did they bargain to have Apple put in an Apple store locally (don't know if they have one already or not). That helps local revenue and residents alike.
Basically I think it's short-sighted to complain about a low number of jobs when you can derive other benefits, plus as noted get the one-time benefits of construction related revenue.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Apple’s data center is also supposed to create 250 indirect contracting jobs for maintenance and security. But many in this close-knit town of about 3,400 people — it essentially shuts down Friday nights for high school football — do not know anyone working at Apple.
This part struck me because we moved into a small town when I was in 7th grade. Small towns are weary of 'outsiders'. I bet that most of the people they hired were IT people that were shipped from elsewhere. (I doubt that a town that small had 50 IT people just sitting around). They were probably young and highly mobile. Give them a chance to settle, make a family, etc.
Untold numbers of high paying jobs in the US disappeared as the US lost it's manufacturing base primarily because the leaders of US companies discovered they could vastly increase their profits by manufacturing their products in low wage countries.
The Apple facility only needs 50 highly specialized engineers and techs. Other than some of the admin, security, maintenance and other misc. personnel, that's pretty much all they need. It is unlikely many of the technical people will be found locally.
It is unrealistic to expect US unemployment/underemployment problems to be solved or even significantly mitigated building facilities like this. It is also unrealistic to expect all these displaced manufacturing workers to retrain to become technical workers or medical workers. Even if they did, there's only so many of those jobs to go around.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
People whose skills are not needed need not be employed. Inequality is a fact not something changeable. A Negative Income Tax sending money to those with less than whatever the minimum is supposed to be could avoid penury for the large group unlikely to do better (not as yet a majority but with techhnology that will come too).
There is no point in competition for any business. None.
Businesses are FORCED by antitrust laws to maintain a certain level of competition instead of simply eliminating it with any means possible.
If they could get away with it they'd divide the pie into various noncompeting monopolies and live happily ever after.
Perhaps buying off, or taking over or selling a monopoly or two here and there.
And when you have an undisputed monopoly, you don't need to innovate or do research - so even friendly competition through research is simply a drain on your bottom line.
Competition has a point ONLY to the consumer.
So, it is not "to sell your goods or services for less than it costs you to supply them" but for the customer to have the widest choice possible.
Whether they choose according to price, quality, availability, variety, service, color... that is up to the (potential) customer.
All 7 billion and counting of them.
Corporations, companies, businesses are not there "to create profit".
Oh sure. Profit IS the motivation for the owner of the capital to create a business/company - through PROVIDING A PRODUCT OR SERVICE NEEDED BY THE SOCIETY.
If there is no need for the product/service they are providing, there is no need for that kind of a company.
And there is no motivation to create it as there is no profit to be made in things that nobody will buy.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
And it took my family from middle class to a one percenter. Seriously, for as smart as the people on Slashdot are, they seem to fail to understand who owns corporations, or that the way to help close income inequality isn't robbing Peter to pay Paul, it's lifting Peter and Paul.
You don't get rich from a paycheck, people. It's what you do with that paycheck that makes you rich.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Stockholders! As an APPL stockholder, I love it. Stop complaining and buy stocks. You won't get rich getting a paycheck from someone else.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
So what do you propose we do about this? The only idea I can think of is to artificially make our economy less efficient- similar to Japan. In Japan, there are many regulations and practices which add jobs, but are inefficient.
For example- in Japan many (most?) private homes are demolished after 20-30 years and rebuilt on the same spot. Certainly a boon to the construction industry, but not very efficient and very costly for the homeowner. There are similar practices in Engineering and Industry- power generation facilities are required to do huge maintenance on their steam turbines every 4 years (by law). In the US, the standard is 6-10 years. The result for Japan is more jobs, the electrical grid is one of the most stable in the world (2011 Tsunami issues aside), and a much higher price for electricity. Cars are usually sold and transferred out of the country before 100,000km (~62,000 miles) because the taxation and maintenance requirements (some maintenance is required by law) increase based on age. In the US, taxation generally decreases dramatically based on age and maintenance is up the car owner. There are similar practices and laws in other areas such as accounting, law, car ownership, etc. which are inefficient but create work for people to do.
You could argue that all of these practices in Japan have made living costs very expensive, and one of the reasons that Japan can't shake their 20-year recession. Or you could argue that many more people in Japan have jobs (building houses, doing maintenance, etc) than otherwise would have. Japan's unemployment is in officially under 5% while the US's figure is around 9%. Take that as you will- both countries cook the unemployment figures to make them seem lower.
Is Japan better because they are less efficient? Maybe, or maybe not. It is a different way of doing things.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
I keep hearing how poor people are, and yet they drive late model cars and have $100/mo cell and cable bills or live in more house than they can afford.
A few hundred a month from one's paycheck would be better spent on an IRA than those material goods. And people with college degrees have like a 5% unemployment rate right now.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
"Take away the patents and innovation will sprout once again"
Do you not remember where the cellphone world was before Apple came along? We all had dumbphones. And yes, Android owners, thank Apple for mainstreaming smartphones and tablets with their patents and innovation. No company would have made the enormous investment to mainstream those types of products without some IP protections. And no small little startup could have taken on the cellcos and monetize handsets like big, bad monopolist Apple did.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
...that's exactly what we need. Another huge tech company to outsource manufacturing overseas. Why didn't I think of that?
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
"The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is clear: To build and maintain those robots."
Currently it is impossible to make another Apple. The current business model is to think of something unique, patent it, and get bought by Apple/Microsoft/Google/Samsung/IBM/Someone Big. Reason being, patents.
You need a patent "war chest" to fight off these big guys and survive in their ecosystem. Typically by buying smaller companies that have patent portfolios already. To get that you need cash. And to get that kind of cash, you already have to be gigantic.
This is why none of these large players are pushing for patent reform. If software patents were to go away the ecosystem would open up and the big companies would have to face new competition.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
You can't retrain most construction and manufacturing line workers to do something like programming. It is more than a matter of IQ although that is not an inconsiderable part of it. I don't know any decent programmers that are less than 1 sigma from the mean and the majority are 2 sigma or more how the IQ curve. But even with the raw intelligence there are plenty of people that just can't program. It is a bit of a mystery as to what that something is that is required.
It is not the job of a company to "spread the wealth". It is the job of a company to create value, things that are valued much more than the value consumed to produce them. That is all. It is not there job to employ people just for the sake of employing them. If the people cannot add to producing more value in the sole judgment of the company then they will not and should not be hired. Until we learn that we will see more companies move more of their operations offshore.
Why on earth would anybody get out their pom-poms for some corporation who isn't paying them jack? Maybe a moron. I really don't care how successful Apple, Google and Facebook are. I'm not a shareholder, not an employee, just one of the schmucks they harvest data from to sell to "advertisers". That's how 90% of the country should feel. Celebrate their success. Yeah, let's have a party......Maybe at one of the occupy encampments....
Not as retarded as the shithead (that would be *YOU*) who responds to a pollution comment with Kyoto. The US has made great strides in the area of general pollution over the past few decades.
You are a total and complete idiot. Seriously, you are dumber than a brick.
There's a lot more nuance to the vegetable picking than laziness. First, the farms are not always close to the people. So sometimes you're throwing away a bunch of that wage (and time) just to get to the job. Second, and much more importantly, is that it is actually piecework, not a true hourly wage. It only works out to $10/hr if you can meet the rate that they specify. And the expected rate is very high because they're used to migrant labor that they can just abuse without repercussion. It's nearly impossible to meet the rate without experience and even with experience it's backbreaking to maintain it for a 8-12 hour day in the sun.
If you don't make the rate, you get paid a pittance.. an inexperienced group in Alabama got $24 for a day's work.
Is removing the outright unamerican prohibition of marijuana. In one action you will instantly create jobs all across America, and also you will divert the flow of money away from criminals and directly to legitimate tax-paying businesses.
There is no rational reason for keeping marijuana illegal. There are plenty of irrational ones (like how Phillip Morris doesn't want the competition, and how religious extremists think they can save a sinner by making the sin illegal), but such reasons should be rejected outright.
Why are we developing robots, solar panels, wind power, nuclear power plants, coal power plants, massive control networks to produce reprogrammable, powered locomotion to produce products?
I once saw a self-powered, fully 6-axis able, reprogrammable machine that can perform all of the functions of these technologies at a fraction of the cost in infrastructure.
It's called a human-being.
All you have to do is feed them, and they produce their own power. You talk to them, and they can change their output. The down-side that business sees is that people have free-will and are self-interested; whereas robots are easily controlled and gladly donate their entire life to the corporation.
I thus make a small logical leap to say that Apple fucked the local residents over because the human-beings (residents) don't dedicate their entire existence to Apple, and that hurts their bottom-line more than paying a crap-ton for prefabricated structures that can be assembled by 50 persons.
The same can be said for the so-called "Green economy." The green economy is also going to be highly automated. Obama is doing disservice by preaching job creation through green jobs. In fact, I'd wager much of the manufacturing behind green products will eventually go overseas to save money. My guess is we will never really see low unemployment again. The US population is too large for the economy and resources to really handle. As more and more industries automate, the baseline unemployment figures will continue to rise.
The rest who seek employment, please consider migrating to places with plenty of jobs. Mature markets like U.S. and Europe require more entrepreneurs than workers.
"I don't have facts to back this up"
The premise of the article seems basically stupid. We don't need more tech giants like Apple because they don't create as many jobs as the manufacturing work which is mostly no longer done in this country? Apple did not cause manufacturing jobs to move overseas; that's a consequence of the economics--basically the availability of overseas semiskilled labor at much lower costs than in the US.
The key point is that Apple's data center created 50 jobs that wouldn't be there if not for Apple, not to mention all of the jobs in Apple stores, all of the people working for Apple in Cupertino, all of the people developing apps, all of the people working on developing, marketing, and selling peripherals for Apple devices, etc., etc. Does the author somehow imagine that the existence of those 50 jobs is preventing other companies from opening factories in North Carolina?
So while it would be wonderful to have some new business that in some magical way makes large scale manual assembly-line work once again economical in the US, it seems like we could use a lot more companies like Apple.
Germany's economic strength comes from having a most of the banking system's profits being reinvested in the country, according to Ellen Brown:
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
Would you take $10 an hour to drive to a different walmart every week or two and cashier. Bonus, the people training you, and your coworkers don't speak english and are probably hazing you to see if you will stick around.
Cheap storage VM.
I read about something called broken window fallacy in wikipedia. Taking inefficiencies out of a system is always good. For example, suppose a hamburger costs $50 because some guy makes it. If we fire him and create a machine that automates hamburger making, we can make hamburgers for $5. When we do that people can enjoy hamburgers for $5 and spend the rest $45 on a nice book, which means the publishing industry prosper and more jobs are created in publishing field.
Automation might mean that unskilled labour is valued less but that might not be a problem in the long run (picture a world like in the movie WallE) where people are free to sit around and pursue any interest of their own because all the pressing needs like food, water, cloathing etc are provided for us by a swarm of automated robots!!!
China has managed to combine the evilest parts of both communism and capitalism: wage-slave working conditions under dog-eat-dog competition, plus no citizen say-so in how things are done.
Table-ized A.I.
(or is that "more cowbell") We may not need more tech giants, but we do need as many companies as possible trying to become tech giants.
We are the 198 proof..
Oh, it's going to take more then "proper" tax policy. To see manufacturing return you'd have to out-compete with Chinese manufacturing, and other third world locations that don't particularly care about worker's health or environmental impact. Or see the price of oil rise so the transportation costs from Chinese ports is prohibitive. But if/when that happens, you're also going to lose customers since, well, you can't afford to ship to them.
The USA still manufactures quite a bit, but it's not a hot industry right now. Our first world economy has moved on. Deal with it, and stop trying to sell buggy whips.
The current low wages and high unemployment are caused by an oversupply of low skilled labor. In an economy in which the employed are normally working many more than 40 hours a week the labor supply can be artificially reduced by implementing penalties for requiring overtime work. In this economy where many hours are cut the only solution is fewer workers. We need effective, free contraception and a people willing to use it and we needed it 30 years ago!
Gee Apple's datacenter doesn't employ large numbers of people... what a surprise. Guess what, GM's storage warehouses don't employ all that many people either. That's not because it isn't manufacturing it's because of the type of facility. Maybe software development houses don't employ as many bodies as manufacturing, but that's not really supported by only looking at a datacenter. If you want a realistic comparison look at all the in country facilities in different industries and then take an average or a scaled average based on market cap or something.
Thank you for you opinions Mt Gloom. Here are some thoughts to cheer you, and everyone else:
Construction jobs like this go to a massive construction company
But usually they employ many people from the area, even if the firm is remote. Also a lot of local supplies are usually used because of expense of shipping. Also they had to eat, and live while there.... etc.
Shipping goes through UPS or FedEx or a dedicated shipping company that will just send a truck from their warehouse in the nearest big city.
They still buy gas, drivers have to eat.
Numerous articles have pointed out that only a couple of iOS developers take home the lion share of the revenues.
And what you totally miss in that equation is that yes, only a handful are millionaires BUT a LOT of developers are bringing in reasonable side income - say a few thousand to tens of thousands a year. And those could be local developers.
Locals pay more for computers and that funnels right back into Apple.
Of which the sales tax on the supposed higher cost of the computers funnels back into the community. Even people purchasing online from Apple in the region.
As you can see, your miscalculation was severe.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
!
Developers? They do their work on a computer. They probably don't access the data center directly at all, and if they do it's over the network. They can live anywhere that's got Internet connectivity.
YES. EXACTLY.
Why should they pack up and move to a small town in North Carolina?
Why NOT!?
The cost of living is far lower and quality of life far HIGHER in a small town. Why NOT this place? Why not leverage the tax break or whatever deal they brokered with Apple to help locals develop apps? It's probably too late for that of course, by why not lure developers to live there by saying they will help support them moving next to the giant Appel Data Center?
And if that's the case then they wouldn't be worried about needing to create more jobs in the area.
Who said they are? All the article says is that they don't get many jobs from it. How do YOU know they are desperate for jobs to start with?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Big warehouse-like data centers aren't that expensive to construct as buildings. They're big hollow concrete boxes with extra power and HVAC. All the equipment comes from elsewhere, as do the installers. The construction job is usually handled by an outside contractor with access to their own work force of people who know how to put up big-box buildings fast.
The local employees get to mow the lawn.
When this machine learns your job, what are you going to do? - 1970s bus poster
This game you mention isn't new. As any industry matures, the industry leaders find that buying the competition brings better success than continuing to try to out-compete them. And the non-leaders are often eager to get bought because this greatly benefits the company's decision-makers a lot more quickly and safely than trying to continue taking on the well-established industry leaders in a well-established industry.
Very few people compete for the sake of competing. They compete for the sake of making money. The most effective way to do that produces this very situation.
This is one of many fundamental paradoxes of capitalism: in order for the economy to benefit, everyone must compete, but no one must ever win.
“Furniture went overseas, and now there’s no future in that.”
Quote from the article. A man far smarter than I once said something along the lines of 'That sound you hear is the giant sucking sound of jobs going out of the country'. And here we are, years later. Sad its not getting any better.
Only 50 people to manage a huge center like that ... that's amazing levels of productivity. We need more business that can work that efficiently not less!
“It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a ‘dismal science.’ But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.”
-Murray N. Rothbard
but after reading the link above book and seeing how in Alabama that no American would bother picking vegetables at $10/hr (not minimum wage!) when unemployment is over 9% shocked me!
No, what should shock you is how the farmers there would rather bitch and moan about not being able to find workers, rather than simply increase the wage like they need to. Apparently workers need to take "lower end jobs", but when employers can't find people, they don't need to increase the wage they're paying.
say Yes Sir with a smile when something needed to get done.
That's because over there, they're trained not to think. They're trained to promise whatever you need to do, regardless of whether it can actually be done or not. Being able to say "Yes, Sir!" with a smile is NOT some kind of virtue or ideal. It's simply pure stupidity.
and they love the dedication in case a project is failing that the workers are happy to do overtime.
Maybe if these same companies actually showed an ounce of dedication to their employees, they'd get some back?
Come to think of it she was right and has a right to be happy like everyone else.
She is not right. She is nothing but a bitch. And you are pussy whipped. Grow a pair. You have a right to be happy too.
The other thing the southern states do is take ~$1.50 from the Fed for every $1.00 they pay in taxes.
They have been living off the teat of the blue states for decades.
They are the welfare states and I'm sick of them dominating the political landscape when it is they that have caused our budget problems.
Both directly by taking more than their fair share, as well as by giving us G.W. Bush's political career.
I do find it disturbing that so many seemingly-intelligent people have fantastic idealistic notions about how the world works.
All (non mentally-ill) people have the same basic motivations. They also respond to the same basic incentives. People don't work for the sake of working, don't compete for the sake of competing, and don't produce for the sake of having such products in the world. People do stuff to get money (and rightly so, since we need money to eat).
Maximizing one's earning potential provides maximum security and luxury, so it is perfectly rational to do so. However, doing so often requires people to do things that are a little less than noble...like, you know, forcing all competitors out of business and setting up barriers-to-entry so one can rent-seek without fear. The gravy-train is a very sweet ride. Only morons think people avoid it when the opportunity presents itself.
Correction, unpaid taxes!!!
The problem with big corporations that make multi billions, have the law and accounting firms to back them up so they end up paying almost nothing in taxes, yet if we had a straight across the board tax fee for companies, say 15%, that would be undeniable and the law, no matter how many lawyers or accountants you had, nothing would keep you from owing the government.
I am wondering why the government has not adopted this yet???
Another teensy problem: whenever America creates another Amazon or Apple, (or Dell) the second thing that happens is the people in suits quickly get into "trim costs" mode in order at all costs to maximize profits. So they 1) export all manufacturing jobs overseas. They get a 1% premium by exporting manufacturing --sure you have higher shipping costs, but 12% is 12%. Note that along with it does all of the supply chain management and logistical support jobs. Next, 2) Export all the design and engineering jobs overseas. You save 4-5% there. Next 3) All the software jobs must go to Bangalore. Long hours and low pay (at least compared to domestic workers) makes for a better bottom line. Next 4) send all of the help desk/call center jobs there. Just train them to speak with a 'suthin' accent and no one will know the difference. At that point you have a head office 'shell' somewhere in North America. Clearly moving the accounting and junior management to an outsourced country with a lower labor rate is best, likewise you can route income through a tropical "Cayman Islands" country where exact profits are hidden. Take this entire article, apply to Apple, Amazon, Dell, and hundreds of other companies and you get what we have now. Asus thanks Dell for doing it.
When I read the Blackshear article, I'm reminded of the adage that one can help another person, but one shouldn't expect gratitude for doing so. Here's a company that has employed tens of thousands of people for a long time, improved the lot of many more, and he slams it because it's not exercising enough "moral responsibility" for his tastes. Instead, Apple is perceived as an expensive luxury, like a yacht or cabin in the woods.
My view is that a healthy economy needs both large and small. For this story, the relevant advantage of large business is that they have the resources to do large projects. A small business wouldn't have the capability to launch huge projects like the iPhone or iPod. A country that consists solely of small businesses would have to outsource these large projects to big businesses in other countries.
Big businesses also can exploit economies of scale and other tricks (such as selective integration of markets). But here, this author wishes to do away with these advantages (or at least move them to more business-friendly countries) because big business is the villain of the day.
Allegedly, it's all about "moral responsibility". But that means whatever the writer intends it to mean at the moment. There's no obvious moral responsibility, for example, for employing US workers over Chinese workers. The company is still providing the same benefits, jobs for people who want and perhaps need them. Nor is there an obvious responsibility to ensure that a certain class of people can afford your product or to employ a certain number of people in North Carolina.
Finally, since the author mentioned the North Carolina data center, it's worth noting that the tax incentive that led to construction of the data center, probably directly created ("or saved") more jobs per dollar spent than federal-level stimulus spending on the same over the last few years.
According to the Washington Post story, the data center has 50 long term jobs plus probably many hundreds of construction jobs for $46 million in tax incentives. If you count that tax break as "spending", that alone probably puts spending per job in the $100k or so range, which is better than the $200k spent per job of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. But given that the taxes probably wouldn't have been collected, if they hadn't made the tax cut, this just means that actual revenue lost/spending per job is probably much less even when one counts the public infrastructure needed to support the data center. And that's very generously assuming you should even consider tax revenue lost as spending, which I don't.
In that light, the cost to government of data centers are remarkably light. They require electricity and real estate, but they don't have any other large demands on public infrastructure. You don't need to build more schools, police departments, etc. They just need electricity and modest facilities. So my view is that North Carolina got a lot for its efforts. 50 permanent jobs might not sound like a lot, but it comes with very few strings attached.
I don't know what makes up good jobs creation efforts, but I think money spent up per job created is a fair place to start looking. And these projects look pretty good to me.
I remember here an economist talk about this issue. Imagine that you were going to dig a trench. A business doing this, would hire a few people and rent a backhoe. They would probably create very few jobs. If your goal was to create jobs, you would instead hire a lot of people, and have them dig the trench with shovels or with tea spoons or something. That would be a huge waste of money. If I specialized in digging holes with tea spoons, I would strongly consider learning a new trade.
In the US, a company can expect to pay an employee $22.87/hour for labor that they can get for $0.45/hour in China. See http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2007/jan/wk1/art03.htm . Companies shouldn't seek to get ripped off. They ought to seek to minimize their costs.
While I agree with much your sentiment, I think it's also true that small businesses that manage to become/stay profitable are often "brass rings" in their own right, for their owners. Sure, they don't make the kind of money the big guys do. But there's a lot of wisdom to the old recommendation to pursue work that you truly enjoy, vs. working "to make money". Most of the time, profits will result as a byproduct. If and when they do, you've found yourself in a great situation, where you're getting paid to do something you actually like doing. You may not get truly rich off of it, but you very well may be living a richer lifestyle in the process, with less stress and more gratification.
The OWS 99% problem is a problem, but I don't think it's quite as much of one as the protestors make it out to be. That's why you have FAR fewer than 99% of the general population out there joining them in protesting. The aspects of their protest I can easily get behind include such topics as the U.S. Federal Reserve cheating all of us out of the "buying power" our currency should otherwise have with fractional reserve banking methods and their insistence on "billing" the government interest on the money it elects to print. The argument that "big businesses are evil because they crush all the small guys who try to get started" is far less accurate, IMO. How many of the protestors actually gave running their own business an honest try? If they haven't, I don't think they're even experienced enough to argue the topic.
I *just* got back home from a trip to Memphis from St. Louis, and drove through a lot of small towns down I-55 in the process. I stopped at a few along the way, too, for food and gas. (Thanks to apps like "Gas Buddy" for my phone, I quickly learned that it's easy to save at least 10-15 cents per gallon on gas by driving a few miles into town, vs. stopping at any of the gas stations right off the exits.)
I won't argue your assertion that the jails are among the "nicest buildings" in some of these towns. As many people as we imprison in the U.S. today, that would certainly not be a surprise, unfortunately.
I'd say the most immediately noticeable "big/nice structures" in the places I visited were mid-sized businesses. For example, one place I stopped had a couple of big buildings in a row, right off the exit. One was a spark plug manufacturer and the other a plastic molding company.
Interestingly, another trend I noticed in the small farm towns was a tax prep service having a nice, new building (H&R Block, for example). I suppose all the complexities of doing Federal and State taxes when you're involved in farming makes that a lucrative business.
Yes, there were often big Wal-Mart stores to be found too -- but that's been the case for as long as I can remember (especially since that WAS the entire point of Wal-Mart's original business model - to go to all the small towns and outlying areas). What I *also* noticed, though, was a tendency for those big Wal-Mart stores to draw in other retailers, forming a whole shopping center with a shared parking lot. The stand-alone Wal-Mart in the middle of nowhere doesn't seem as prevalent as it once was. There seems to be a synergy effect, where places like restaurants or home improvement stores do well next to a Wal-Mart, for example.
All in all, yeah - you can drive through one of these towns and get "super depressed" by what you see. But it's also easy to forget how few people actually live in many of these places. Only so much industry is sustainable when your total population is only several thousand. You actually get a little bit better picture of how much business is really taking place in some of these towns with a look through their local phone book (although even that is becoming less useful as people turn to the internet more and more). Still, you'll usually see everything from on-site computer services to hair stylists running business out of their homes, even when a drive down the street gives an impression that it's nothing but collapsing structures that once were businesses.
So true... it's strange to see migrant farm workers counted as the "unskilled immigrants" that we supposedly don't want, when it actually takes experience and skill to make a wage from farm work.
I'm sure you're smart enough to know this and you're just trying to make a snarky comment.....
But wealth spreads to the "chosen" people actually working for the business in some capacity, first and foremost. Stock allows people (with enough money to be able to afford it) to RISK some of their money by purchasing a company's stock and HOPING some of its wealth will spread to them.
The buying of stock isn't even a level playing field, for that matter. For example, one of my co-workers, back in the 90's, was VERY intent on buying as much stock as possible in RedHat when they first announced an IPO. He was a BIG believer in Linux and the fact that they'd be very successful going commercial with their distro.
Guess how much stock he managed to buy on opening day? 0 shares! Why? Because he discovered he was just another peon in the marketplace. Only "preferred" traders who did large volumes of annual business with a broker got "first dibs" on hot IPOs like that. There was no way a trader was going to sell HIM some primo stock like that on the first day of trading, when he had all his millionaire clients clamoring for some of it A.S.A.P.
but they don't spread this wealth around as much as earlier industrial giants did
Isn't the problem they spread the wealth too far from home?
We used to hear that American workers priced themselves out of jobs because of high wages and benefits. Now I'm hearing that we can't build a factory because there are no trained workers OR because the competing factories in China are huge and can make multiple kinds of products. You can't possible build anything like that in the US (apparently). Sigh.
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
Manufacturing will ONLY come back after they take to the streets and destroy the robots now doing that work. The US still makes one fifth of everything made in the world, but the thing is that instead of a hundred guys in an assembly line, it's now ten guys minding the machines. If a manufacturing center did show up in NC, it would probably only hire 50 people too.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"Companies like Apple 'create amazing products and vast shareholder wealth, but they don't spread this wealth around as much as earlier industrial giants did"
It's not their job to spread the wealth. Wealth has to be earned and created. EGADS what's a frightening statement!
"Only 60,000 workers" worldwide, but how many pieces of automated machinery/robots? It is not 1951 anymore people.
Canada learned this a long time ago, and has special government incentives for small business startups. Small businesses can be as large as one person.
My partner and I are two, we received 12 months of unemployment insurance while we were starting up our business. Our obligation was to follow a 9 months of courses (1 day per week), to learn marketing research, doing and presenting a business plan, understanding legal contracts, accounting, Income and business taxes and HR.
What a fantastic deal that we had three years ago. We are in a growing small business. We are up to 3 employees and ourselves.
I already get more vacation than I use each year (but my boss is kind enough to file the paperwork to roll it over), and I've missed work for being sick exactly once in my life (caught a nasty flu bug a couple of years ago and chose to stay home so as to hopefully not infect any co-workers).
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
I have worked for a couple of Walmart suppliers doing RFID projects. To be a supplier you have to use RFID on your products and pallets by a certain date (the date has changed a number of times). This is how the UPC symbol was adopted, Walmart required anyone doing business with them to have a UPC symbol, now it is used everywhere.
OK where am I going with this? Well once pallets and products are RFID enabled, the next step is to replace the people who place products on the shelves with robots.
Much more of society is going to be marginalized. Keep yourself relevant to the requirements and demands of today’s and the future landscape.
Who built the datacenter? Who installed the computers? Who built the computers inside it? Who will build the spare parts that will keep it running in the years to come? Who hooked it up to the grid? Who supplies it? Who will repair it? Where will the money Apple pays in taxes for it go?
"You're an idiot "
Since you set the uncivil tone, fuck you and your Marxist shit, asshole!
Part and parcel with these deals is essentially a waiver from property tax. These are not minor discounts.
Try to know the facts (or lack thereof) behind your arguments; they'll be more sound.
One of the issues with the article is that the "50 jobs" quote is while on the surface is true but you need to look at more than the surface of the quote.
When you add in the the other jobs that are created as a by product of the data center like the electricians and the other people that are not directly employed by the installation the number adds up. Granted its not hundreds but there are additional employment numbers. As to the 100's or more that were some how imagined this is not a high number of people employee company. It is simply a highly automated facility. The other people that will service the company will be brought in as needs dictate.